had been her rink.
His legs flew from under him, then the end of the float itself. For an absurd instant he felt he was falling off the world, flying out into space. The black pavement struck him like a fist.
United
As from a great height, he looked down upon an endless plain of snow. It was nearly featureless, yet lit by a slanting sun so that such features as it possessed cast long shadows to eastward, their shadows more distinct and more visible than they. Night came quickly from the north, devouring the shadows, transforming the plain into a featureless darkness lit only by the memory of light.
“He’s closing his eyes, Dr. Pille.” (A woman’s voice.) “As I see.” (An androgynous voice, followed by footsteps that were merely padded and neither loud nor soft.) Day came again, and quickly.
“Are you awake?”
He said, “I think so.”
A middle-aged woman in a white cap bent over him; the plain of snow receded, shrunk to a ceiling.
“That was a nasty bump you got there.”
“What happened?” There was a dull throb at the back of his head.
“You fell down in the street.”
“And I had the wildest dream,” he told her. “Lara was just a little doll, and I showed her to an old Chinese. Can you give me something for this headache?”
She nodded and pulled a cork from a brown bottle. “Here. Smell this.”
It had the odor of spring, when new green growth duels with melting snow in the rain-washed air. The throbbing sank, almost vanished.
“What’s that?” he asked her.
“Just aspenin. Your nose may not work right for a while.” She rose. “Everything okay now?”
He nodded, bringing back the ghost of the throb. “When can I get out of here?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Dr. Pille will see you again, and he may have you released. He may want to keep you for a few more days. Press the call button if you need me.”
She was gone before he could ask her another question. He sat up, finding that he was sore everywhere. The room was tiny, with just space enough for the narrow hospital bed, a dwarfish white-enameled chair, a white- enameled night table, and a white locker. The walls were white, too, and the floor was white tile.
Gingerly, he swung his feet over the side of the bed. The locker probably held his clothes, with the doll Lara— Tina. He laughed.
A dream! It had been a dream, and nothing more—the mental health clinic; the dolls’ infirmary; the strange, high shop that sold maps of elfland; the odd parade—all dreams.
But Lara?
Had Lara, too, been only a dream? If that were so, he did not wish to wake.
No, Lara was real, a real woman with whom he had talked and walked beside the river, ate and drank and slept only yesterday. Or perhaps, on the day before yesterday. Perhaps he had lost an entire day already, here in the hospital. Lara would be worried about him, back in that drafty old apartment. He ought to call, ought somehow to comfort her.
Yet it had been summer, surely, when they strolled beside the river. He recalled the smell of flowers, of green leaves; they must have been there. It was winter now, or was it?
Unsteadily, he went to the window. The hospital’s little patch of lawn was pale with snow; dark figures bundled in wool, wrapped in mufflers to the eyes, picked perilous paths down an icy sidewalk. The street was gray with slush; even the brick-red, clanging trolleys were roofed with snow.
The white locker was locked, and he had no key. He rattled the locker door until a black man in a white uniform looked in at him. “You! Get back in the bed!” The black man pointed a finger.
He said, “I want my clothes.”
“You get them when you get out. Till then, they stayin’ locked up safe.” The black advanced menacingly. “Now get in the bed or you don’t get no chocolate puddin’ for dinner. Want me to have to give you a shot? I got a needle ’bout as sharp as the end on a nail.” Without touching him, the black man crowded him back until he sat once more upon the bed.
“Who do I have to see to get that opened?”
“Your doctor.” The black man retreated to study the chart hanging from the foot of the bed. “He Dr. Pille. He make his rounds tomorrow. Till then, you stay in the bed ’less the nurse say you can get up.”
“All right.”
“You in for a sex change, huh?”
He jumped to his feet.
“Whoa-o! What I tell you? It don’t say nothin’ like that here. Just a concussion, and multiple bruises and stuff. Now you stay in the bed if you want puddin’.”
When the black man had gone, he considered getting out of bed again. There seemed no point to it. The locker was locked, and he had nothing with which to break into it. The key was no doubt in some drawer in the nurses’
